Freedom?
By Kevin Ryan and Fiona Whelan
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About this ebook
As a figure of thought, the concept of freedom tends to shuttle between abstraction and ideal – the first exemplified by Isaiah Berlin’s contrast between negative and positive liberty, and the second by Philip Pettit’s neo-republican conception of freedom as non-domination. Located within the realm of lived experience however, freedom is invariably forged from context-specific constraints and takes the form of cultural practices. In this contribution to the Síreacht series, the collaborative platform Two Fuse examine the practice of freedom in the context of neo-liberal enterprise culture, focusing specifically on how this is shaped by power relations that sustain social suffering by generating an equality of inequality. Responding to this situation, Two Fuse look to socially-engaged art with a view to exploring possibilities to reimagine the practice of freedom, paying particular attention to the 2016 performance Natural History of Hope by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers.
Kevin Ryan
Kevin Ryan is the author of Pocket Books popular Star Trek trilogy Errand of Vengeance, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation—Requiem (with Michael Jan Friedman). He has also written the screenplay for the novel Eleven Hours and the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Resistance,” as well as two Roswell novels for Simon Pulse and thirteen various comic books published by DC Comics.
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Book preview
Freedom? - Kevin Ryan
Freedom?
Síreacht: Longings for Another Ireland is a series of short, topical and provocative texts on controversial issues in contemporary Ireland.
Contributors to the Síreacht series come from diverse backgrounds and perspectives but share a commitment to the exposition of what may often be disparaged as utopian ideas, minority perspectives on society, polity and environment, or critiques of received wisdom. Associated with the phrase ceól sírechtach síde found in Irish medieval poetry, síreacht refers to yearnings such as those evoked by the music of the aos sí, the supernatural people of Irish mythology. As the title for this series, we use it to signify longings for and imaginings of a better world in the spirit of the World Social Forums that ‘another world is possible’. At the heart of the mythology of the sí is the belief that laying beneath this world is the other world. So too these texts address the urgent challenge to imagine potential new societies and relationships, but also to recognise the seeds of these other worlds in what already exists.
Other published titles in the series are
Public Sphere by Harry Browne
Commemoration by Heather Laird
The editors of the series, Órla O’Donovan, Fiona Dukelow and Rosie Meade, School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, welcome suggestions or proposals for consideration as future titles in the series. Please see http://sireacht.ie/ for more information.
Freedom?
by TWO FUSE
Series Editors:
Órla O’Donovan, Fiona Dukelow and Rosie Meade
First published in 2018 by
Cork University Press Youngline
Industrial Estate
Pouladuff Road, Togher
Cork T12 HT6V, Ireland
© Fiona Whelan and Kevin Ryan 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in Ireland issued by the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 25 Denzille Lane, Dublin 2.
The right of the authors to be identified as originator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000 to 2007.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN- 9781782052395
Typeset by Studio 10 Design
Printed by Hussar Books in Poland
CONTENTS
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Degrees of Freedom
Freedom in the Enterprise Society: catch up, keep up, get ahead …
Reimagining the Practice of Freedom
Natural History of Hope
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index
FIGURES
Figure 1: Anonymous; Reading, Narrative & Memory, by What’s the Story? Collective, Rialto, 2008. Video stills by Enda O’Brien. Collaged by Fiona Whelan. © Fiona Whelan and Rialto Youth Project.
Figure 2: The Day in Question, by What’s the Story? Collective, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2009. Video still by Enda O’Brien.
© Fiona Whelan and Rialto Youth Project.
Figure 3: Policing Dialogues, by What’s the Story? Collective, The LAB, Dublin, 2010. Photograph by Michael Durand. © Dublin City Council Arts Office.
Figure 4: Policing Dialogues, by What’s the Story? Collective, The LAB, Dublin, 2010. © Fiona Whelan.
Figure 5: Natural History of Hope, by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2016. © Ray Hegarty.
Figure 6: The Day in Question, by What’s the Story? Collective, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2009. Video still by Enda O’Brien. © Fiona Whelan and Rialto Youth Project.
Figure 7: Policing Dialogues, by What’s the Story? Collective, The LAB, Dublin, 2010. Photograph by Michael Durand. © Dublin City Council Arts Office.
Figure 8: Natural History of Hope, by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2016. © Ray Hegarty.
Figure 9: Natural History of Hope, by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2016. Programme design by Unthink. © Chris Maguire.
Figure 10: Natural History of Hope, by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2016. Video still by Paddy Cahill. © Shoot to Kill
Illustrations throughout are by Orla Whelan, 2017 (© Orla Whelan, www.whaledust.com).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At once an ethos and a method of inquiry, Two Fuse (www.twofuse.com) is a collaborative platform that brings together Kevin Ryan (who works in the discipline of sociology) and Fiona Whelan (who works in the field of socially engaged/collaborative arts) through a commitment to thinking across the boundaries of disciplinary enclosures. Two Fuse is a way of acknowledging the collaborative nature of inquiry, that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding entails both direct and indirect encounters and exchanges. We thus wish to thank the many people who have made it possible for us to engage in meaningful discussion, including the staff and management of Rialto Youth Project and partner community organisations, the residents of Rialto, An Garda Síochána, Brokentalkers theatre company, the Studio 468 team and all the individual advisors who have engaged with the practice we discuss in Section 3, including Kathleen Lynch, Martina Carroll, Niall O’Baoill, Ailbhe Murphy, Ciaran Smyth, Annette Moloney and Aogan Mulcahy.
Special acknowledgment goes to Jim Lawlor, manager of Rialto Youth Project, the members of What’s the Story? Collective – Jamie Hendrick, Jonathan Myers, Gillian O’Connor, Garrett Kenny, Nichola Mooney, Graham Dunphy, Vanessa Kenny, Michael Byrne and Nicola Whelan, and the coordination group and primary cast of Natural History of Hope – Sharon Cooney, Nichola Mooney, Michelle Dunne, Gillian O’Connor, Dannielle McKenna, Audrey Wade, Lydia Lynam, Niamh Tracey, Vicky White, Lisa Graham and Amy White – all of whom have been long-time collaborators of Fiona’s. The practice discussed in Section 3 received funding from multiple sources over a decade, all of which are listed on fionawhelan.com. Special thanks are due to the Arts Council of Ireland for regular support.
Thanks also to Barry Devlin, Horslips, and Crashed Music for permission to use the quote from Horslips’ album Aliens in the introduction to this book (© Horslips Records).
Section 2 is an expanded and revised version of an article by Kevin Ryan published in the Journal of Political Power as ‘Academic Freedom and the Eye of Power’ (2016), © Taylor & Francis, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com, article DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2016.1191162.
Section 4 is a series of excerpts from Natural History of Hope, a live performance from Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers (May 2016), who have collectively given permission for the work to be reproduced here (© Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and Brokentalkers). We also wish to express our gratitude for permission to use the shorter extract from Natural History of Hope in Section 3.
This publication is illustrated by Orla Whelan (2017), © Orla Whelan (see www.whaledust.com).
Introduction
Look at the little crazy guy, swaggering down the hall, he could dance his way to freedom if you don’t make him fall …¹
Many of the words and concepts we use in everyday language have the peculiar feature of being ready to hand and easy to use, until the moment we are asked to explain or defend our usage. This is partly because we may not always be fully aware of how we are using words that are so familiar that their meaning appears self-evident.² ‘Democracy’ is a good example. When we say a government or organisation is democratic, we are most likely also making an evaluative statement – we are implicitly or explicitly expressing a positive appraisal of the government or organisation in question.³ ‘Freedom’ can be a troubling word to use for similar reasons. Is there a valid way to distinguish between the use and misuse of a word such as freedom? There is an extensive and interesting academic literature that can assist us in this regard, for example by enabling us to distinguish freedom from (tyranny or domination), freedom to (pursue a particular conception of the good life or the good society), and freedom as (self-determination or autonomy).⁴ If we take the time to study exemplary texts written by philosophers and social scientists on the topic of freedom, then we can learn to grasp – in our mind – the idea of freedom. However, this way of knowing is not always satisfactory, not least because many of the great minds who have written on the topic of freedom have done so by retreating from the messiness of the real world in order to construct a purified and unified concept or theory.⁵ If we instead begin with a question such as: ‘what is it that motivates people to act and struggle in the name of freedom?’, then we are perhaps obliged to pay attention to the substance of freedom. In other words, freedom is something we experience and practise in everyday life.
Freedom is also something we can imagine, but this is arguably different from engaging in theoretical abstraction. To imagine freedom is not the same as being able to debate the work of eminent philosophers on the topic of freedom. To imagine is to imbue our thoughts, and possibly our actions, with the power of creativity; it is to begin to sense that the world we inhabit can be altered, maybe even transformed. This might also serve as a reminder that freedom has a fugitive quality in that it always promises to be more than it actually is. To phrase that slightly differently, to imagine